Nintendo announced today that it is discontinuing the NES Classic Edition in North America, less than six months after its initial release. The miniature replica of Nintendo’s classic console allows players to play a set of 30 pre-installed game via software emulation. Following its release on November 11th, it was an instant hit and was consistently sold out at every retailer. Retailers in North America will continue to receive shipments throughout the month of April, but no more systems will be produced.
A Nintendo of America representative told IGN that this was always the plan. According to said representative, “NES Classic Edition wasn’t intended to be an ongoing, long-term product. However, due to high demand, we did add extra shipments to our original plans.” As you may know, however, the “extra shipments” don’t seem to have made it any easier to obtain one.
In addition to discontinuing the NES Classic Edition system, Nintendo will be discontinuing the first party NES Classic Controller. Third party accessory manufacturers may continue to produce accessories for the console, but that will be their choice and said accessories may be discontinued, as well.
While it is unknown at this time how many NES Classic Edition units have been sold in total, Nintendo revealed during a meeting to discuss its 3rd quarter financial results this past January that it had sold 1.5 million units at the time.
There are a number of theories as to why the NES Classic Edition is being discontinued, ranging from Nintendo simply trying to fill the gap during the holiday season before the Switch was released this past March to Nintendo vastly underestimating the demand for the product and inevitably opting to not bother. Some even believe that Nintendo detests piracy to the point that they are discontinuing the console in order to put a stop to the piracy that was made possible by a toolset released by a Russian hacker. Whatever the case, consumers aren’t exactly happy.
It should be noted that the NES Classic Edition is only being discontinued in North America at this time. Furthermore, when Gamespot asked whether the 30 games that were available on the console would be made available on the Virtual Console, Nintendo had “nothing to announce at this time.”
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